US immigration arrests increase: Report

Washington, April 17 (IANS) Arrests at the immigration points in the US rose 32.6 per cent in the first months of President Donald Trumps administration, a Washington Post report said.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 21,362 immigrants, mostly convicted criminals, from January through mid-March, compared to 16,104 during the same period last year, the report said on Sunday.

Arrests of immigrants with no criminal records doubled to 5,441, the clearest sign yet that President Trump has ditched his predecessor Barack Obama’s protective stance toward most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US.

Advocates for immigrants have said that the unbridled enforcement has led to a sharp drop in reports from Latinos of sexual assaults and other crimes in Houston and Los Angeles, and terrified immigrant communities across the US.

ICE’s Atlanta office arrested the most immigrants who had never committed any crimes, with nearly 700 arrests, up from 137 the prior year.

Philadelphia had the biggest percentage increase, with 356 non-criminal arrests, more than six times as many as the year before, the Washington Post report said.

The ICE field offices with the largest total number of arrests — more than 2,000 each — were in Dallas, which covers north Texas and Oklahoma; Atlanta, which includes Georgia and the Carolinas; and Houston, which spans Southeast Texas.

Overall, deportations were down by 1.2 per cent, to 54,741 in January, February and March, compared to the same period last year.